New high-tech Anaerobic Digestion plant from Burdens

Burdens has installed a small anaerobic digestion biogas plant in Llangadog in Carmarthenshire, south Wales, in a rural location close to an area designated as SSI. The plant – which is representative of a range of systems that the company plans to bring to the market – is run in conjunction with a small private commercial recycling centre and a Civic Amenity Site operated under contract to Carmarthenshire CC as a public facility. The anaerobic digestion/biogas plant is designed to process 1000–1500 tonnes a year (20–30 tonnes a week) of local segregated food wastes derived from local authority household kerbside collections and commercial food-related businesses.

The anaerobic digestion plant incorporates a patented separated hydrolysis system that converts organic material into renewable energy. This is a subtle but important evolution in the principal biological process common to anaerobic digestion plants. Developed in Britain, the process has already been licensed to plants in Europe. The process and monitoring systems enable maximum constant yields of biogas to be maintained, delivering increased efficiency – typically up to 30% better than existing methods – with less operator supervision required.

The system is scalable and straightforward to install and opens a new market for local treatment plants for feedstock such as municipal household, institutional, process and commercial food wastes. Options include DC power generation for vehicle operation or battery storage.

Anaerobic Digestion Plants from Burdens

Burdens is bringing to market a range of these ‘stealth plants’ with capacities from 10-50 tonnes per week.  Costs for the fully installed plants are likely to be between £200k and £1.5m, excluding the building. With outputs from 20 to 200kW, the plants should achieve a 5–10-year payback and have captured the attention of a number of significant funders. Thanks to their modular and scalable designs, anaerobic digestion plants can be operational in weeks not years, subject of course to planning consents.

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Data from local authorities engaged in kerbside collection suggest that average returns are around 2kg waste per household: every 10,000 households will therefore generate 20 tonnes/week, or 1000 tonnes a year. Burdens believes that it makes better environmental sense to process waste and harvest the energy as close to the point of origin as possible, since hauling wastes to larger plants is becoming more and more expensive as oil prices rise.
With its innovative technology, the plant at Llangadog has been enthusiastically received by all sides. Indeed, the South Wales Animal Health Regional Office that oversees compliance with ABPR regulations is able to log online to monitor compliance with the provisions of the legislation. There is a similar plan to enable the public and local schools to monitor the levels of energy derived from the wastes processed.

That the plants are unobtrusive was demonstrated recently when HRH the Prince of Wales visited the site. For, when he asked local villagers what they thought of the food waste plant, many said they did not know the plant was there until his visit.

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